


Uncover the Endless Hours

by BarlowGirl



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: (Mild but will explain in notes), Ableist Language, Alive Laura, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Babysitting, Derek POV, M/M, Police Officer Stiles, Standard Kate Argent Warning, Stiles POV, alternating pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 10:14:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/810419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BarlowGirl/pseuds/BarlowGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Can I buy you breakfast?” Derek blurted, then cringed. Where exactly had <i>that</i> come from? He couldn’t actually remember the last time he'd asked somebody out. Not that he was asking Stiles out. Just for breakfast. And - he was pathetic.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Stiles blinked, honey-whiskey-golden eyes huge in the dim light. “What?”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I woke up you up at two in the morning,” Derek said, more slowly. “I – you know, food?”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Oh.” Stiles shook his head. “I have to get up at five and I stayed up stupid late as it is. I’m gonna be a mess tomorrow already and–”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Nobody gives a fuck, Romeo,” somebody shouted from outside and Stiles jerked so hard he cracked his head on Derek’s windowsill. </i>
</p><p>Or: The one where Stiles is a cop and Derek doesn't sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Uncover the Endless Hours

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, the language involves of casual uses of words like "idiot" or "stupid", and the like. I'm trying to cut those out of my vocabulary so I've been trying to make a note of them in my fics so as not to normalize them.
> 
> Also let's pretend that I didn't name the baby in this the same name as one of the Alpha twins. I kind of tend to forget they exist and I just grabbed a name out of thin air.
> 
> I know nothing about New York or cops or... anything. If there are glaring inaccuracies, please let me know. As well, part of the premise of this is that Derek is currently in therapy for PSTD-type symptoms (I don't want to say PTSD specifically because I'm not a doctor or someone who has it) from the Kate Argent incident when he was nineteen. If anyone has problems with the portrayal of that, let me know what they are, please? I'm not in way trying to make that a joke, even though this originally started as a silly AU. (15k later...)
> 
> Title from Hours by Evaline.

There were footsteps on his balcony again.

Except there weren’t, actually, because they weren’t real. And Derek knew that, okay? He was fucked up, not stupid. He knew that there was nobody on the fire escape, just like there wasn't anybody out there last three times his brain chemistry convinced him there was. He knew that it was probably a bird or the wind or his own imagination and he knew it didn’t even matter, because there was most definitely not an actual person out there.  It was just hard to remember that when he kept waking up smelling smoke. And he couldn’t exactly put a bookcase in front of the window or something, not when he lived on the sixth floor. For one thing, he would never again be able to actually _be_ in his apartment, and for another, he’d get his ass kicked for doing something so stupid and –

Okay, no, that was a footstep. Derek would be – well, not the _first_ person, but well within the top ten people to tell you he was paranoid, but that was a footstep and he lived in New York and he suddenly couldn’t remember if the latch on the window caught right when he shut it the last time he checked the fire escape and that – that sounded like the window opening.

His back was pressed against the wall next to the door in his bedroom before he realized what he was doing. This was so stupid. It was probably nothing, but he couldn’t – he should call the cops, he _knew_ that, but his phone was on his dresser across the room and he wasn’t sure he could get the door shut without it making noise because it creaked like a bitch. Derek pressed his hand against his chest, his heart pounding so hard it hurt. This was so going to fuck up his therapy schedule.

Oh God. Laura was gonna be pissed if she had to bail him out of jail.

 

 

The all-too-familiar sound of pacing woke Stiles up. He groaned, rolled over and pulled the pillow over his head. Not tonight, not when he needed to wake up in – he risked a glance at the clock and groaned again – three freaking hours. Yesterday had been seriously rough. He needed to get some sleep, preferably with nice quality REM, or he was going to be a zombie in the so-called morning.

But when his cell phone went off on the nightstand, he grabbed it before he even thought about it. It was the emergency only phone and the different ringtone always jarred him. He rarely gave the number out and he couldn’t even think about not answering it.

 _Please_ , was all the text message said.

He groaned again and sent back, _No. He’s fine._

_He’s having a bad night. The fire escape is freaking him out again. Please._

_You’re a bitch and I hate you._

_Thank you._

Stiles kicked the covers off and grabbed the jeans off the chair next to his bed, sliding the phone into the empty front pocket as he pulled them on. It was two in the morning and he had to wake up at five for work and he was a _sucker_.

It was almost habit by this point to take the elevator down to the first floor and the stairs back all the way to the sixth, walking down the hallway between flights. He'd done this probably a dozen times since Derek moved in, because he felt like a horrible person if he didn't actually check to see if there was something going on. There was nobody out, never was this late, but it made him feel better to not be a liar when he told Laura that everything was okay. That done, he went back down the last flight of stairs and into his apartment on the fifth floor and climbed out the living room window onto the fire escape.

And stopped dead.

There was a muddy footstep on the third step of the stairs leading up to the next level. He hadn’t been outside since when he got home yesterday and he hadn’t gone up those stairs since last month. It wasn’t his and it was most definitely not an animal’s. There were shoe treads and everything. Stiles swallowed, absently patted the front pocket of his jeans, and went back inside for a moment. When he slid back out the window a few minutes later, he was already dreading the phone call he might have to make.

 

 

The person sneaking through his apartment let out a shout and hit the floor when he saw Derek.

Uh. Well. That wasn’t how he expected that to go, Derek thought, flexing his fingers restlessly. Now what was he supposed to do?

“No, police, look!" The person fumbled for something in his jeans with his free hand and then waved it Derek's general direction. "Badge! I'm your neighbour, I bought you cookies from my favourite bakery when you moved in because I can’t bake, your sister sent me a Christmas card even though I’m Jewish which I actually think is really nice, you want to give me some hint you're getting any of this, dude?”

The kid from upstairs, Derek realized, then slapped his hand against the light switch and flooded the room with light. “What the living hell are you doing in my apartment?”

“There were weird footprints on my fire escape stairs and while I’m thinking now somebody is just having an affair or something, it’d look really bad on my record if I let my upstairs neighbour die when I thought something was up and holy _God_ put the baseball bat down ’cause if I have to arrest you, Laura’s gonna break my legs and I don’t wanna be on desk duty.”

Derek looked at the bat still in his hand. Oh. He’d forgotten about that. He made himself loosen his fingers and tossed it away from him, because there was a gun in the kid’s hand, aimed down and away from Derek, but a gun nonetheless, and he probably should be somewhat concerned about that.

“Thanks,” the kid said, holstering the gun. He probably wasn’t really a kid – not if he was a cop and how did Derek not remember that? – but he looked like he was about sixteen with the buzzcut and huge freaking eyes. “It’s Stiles, by the way.”

“Derek.”

“I know, I’ve introduced myself to you about a dozen times since you moved in last year.” Stiles shoved himself to his feet with all the grace of a newborn deer on ice. “Can I check out the rest of your apartment, make sure everything’s okay?”

Derek nodded and went to get his phone. Laura turned her phone off at night, but she liked when he texted her when he couldn’t sleep. She thought it was good for him to vent. And considering the last thing he sent her was a half-panicked text about somebody being on his fire escape, it might be a good idea to reassure her that he was fine, in case she woke up with the baby and checked her phone. Okay, granted, it wasn’t the first time he’d texted her something like that but usually it didn’t actually _happen_.

“We’re good,” Stiles said from just outside the door of Derek’s bedroom. “Sorry about crawling through your window at two in the morning. Something just felt weird.”

Derek shrugged. “Thanks for not arresting me for trying to take your head off. Because I don’t think Laura would bail me out.”

“Probably not,” Stiles agreed. “At least not until tomorrow. After a long, leisurely breakfast.”

“Yeah, probably,” Derek said with a rough laugh. “Sorry for – it’s late as hell.”

“Yeah, well.” Stiles shrugged. “Creepy shit never happens – well, okay, I can’t actually say that. Creepy shit happens in the daytime, too. In any case, glad you weren’t being horribly murdered after all. Here, why don’t I give you this… shit, I don’t have any of my cards. Okay, here give me your phone.”

Before Derek could blink, Stiles plucked the phone right out of his hands. He poked at the screen for a moment, chewing on his bottom lip, and then gave a nod. “I have two cell phones so I’m gonna give you my normal number and my emerg number. So, y’know, I’m one fire escape away.” Stiles handed the phone back and ran his hands over his barely-there hair. “Are you good?”

“Yes,” Derek said through his teeth. He hated nothing more than when people treated him like he was breakable.

“Okay. I’m… probably going to go out your window because I left mine open downstairs. Make sure you lock it behind me."

Stiles crawled out the living room window, not at all graceful. Derek has doubts at this point about how he hasn’t been murdered.

At the last minute, Stiles leaned back in. “Hey. Sleep well.”

“Can I buy you breakfast?” Derek blurted, then cringed. Where the _fuck_ had that come from? He couldn’t actually remember the last time he'd asked somebody out. Not that he was asking Stiles out. Just to breakfast. And - holy fuck, he was pathetic.

Stiles blinked, honey-whiskey-golden eyes huge in the dim light. “What?”

“I woke up you up at two in the morning,” Derek said, more slowly. “I – you know, food?”

“Oh.” Stiles shook his head. “I have to get up at five and I stayed up stupid late as it is. I’m gonna be a mess tomorrow already and–”

“Nobody gives a fuck, Romeo,” somebody shouted from outside and Stiles jerked so hard he cracked his head on Derek’s windowsill.

“Shit,” Stiles said, rubbing the back of his head, and laughed. “Right. Goodnight, Juliet. Parting is such sweet sorrow and all that.”

Derek shut the window after Stiles gave a wave and headed down the stairs. He locked it, jiggled it a few times to make sure it was locked for sure this time, and closed the curtains. Then he walked into his bedroom and threw himself face first onto his bed, yanking the pillow over his head like that could somehow hide how hard he was blushing. Hide it… from himself, apparently, and what the hell was wrong with him?

Oh fuck a duck, Laura was going to find out about this and _never let it go_.

 

 

Half of Stiles’ clothes smelled like hospital. The other half of them had been worn too many times to wear again and, honestly, Stiles had kind of been pushing it when he’d settled on these ones, but the hospital smell made him anxious. The airplane-travel-body-odour-little-bit-like-chicken-soup smell wasn’t much better but at least with that he could sleep on the plane. A little, anyways. He was still running on four hours, tops, for the last thirty-six, but it was sleeping. He was so out of it from sleep-deprivation when he finally got home that he almost took out the person coming out of the elevator as he went in, managing to knock everything they were carrying out of their arms.

“Sorry, shit, sorry, sorry!” Stiles crouched down and grabbed whatever he could get his hands on. “That was my fault. I haven’t slept enough lately and it makes me a klutz and also makes me talk too much, sorry, shutting up now, here’s your stuff–” He looked up and blinked, surprised. “Oh! Derek. Hey. Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Derek said, taking his stuff without looking at Stiles for more than a second or two. “You look – you look kind of exhausted.”

“Yeah, I can never sleep at a hospital and dude, did you know being born takes like forever? Like literally hours of agonizing pain.”

That got Derek to look at him, frowning. “What?”

Stiles smiled so hard his face hurt, but he literally couldn’t keep the grin off his face. “My best friend had a baby. I mean, his girlfriend did, she did the carrying and the pushing and the horrible, awful things that I don’t ever want to have to see because they’re horrible and awful and Allison is amazing, she’s a Disney princess but like Mérida or, you know, Rapunzel, even, with the kicking butt and the flawlessness.”

Derek caught him around the arm and tugged, lightly. Stiles stood up because he didn’t trust these elevator doors not to close around him and kill him gruesomely, even though they _said_  that wasn’t supposed to happen.

“Congrats,” Derek said as he pulled Stiles into the elevator. “Boy or girl?”

“Girl.” Stiles took his phone out from his front pocket. “Her name is Sienna and she’s tiny and beautiful and perfect and I don’t know how my stupid best friend made somebody so perfect. Allison, yeah, but Scott is _Scott_ , he’s… here, look. I took so many pictures. She’s so pretty, she’s got Allison’s dimples already and Scott’s eyes and I’m going to spoil her rotten. Revenge for seventeen years of friendship, right?”

“I buy Laura’s kid the noisy toys that take batteries because she made fun of my teeth when we were kids.” Derek leaned closer so he could see the screen of Stiles’ phone. “And then when I visit, I change their batteries when she leaves the room. The only reason she hasn’t disowned me is because I buy him books, too. Oh, God, she’s beautiful. She’s so tiny. How is she real?”

“Seven pounds, six ounces,” Stiles announced proudly as he leaned against the wall of the elevator, like he was an expert in baby weights and had any idea of what that meant beyond really little.

“Ethan was ten pounds, four ounces.”

They winced at the same time. That, that Stiles understood.

“Tell your friends congrats for me,” Derek said as the elevator stopped. “And get some sleep before you kill yourself.”

“Yeah, I will,” Stiles agreed. “Thanks for letting me talk at you, dude.”

Stiles fell asleep fifteen minutes later, naked and still dripping from his shower, but not before looking at the photos on his phone one last time. Because Scott had a _kid_ , dude.

 

 

“You rode the elevator back up to make sure he got home okay?” Laura bit her lip like she was trying not to smile. Kind of failing miserably, but she was trying, Derek would give her that. “Because he was in such danger of not making it out of the elevator and into his apartment unscathed. Derek.”

“I know.” He groaned and rolled a bright red toy ball across the floor to where Ethan sat in front of Laura’s legs, supported by them since he was still pretty wobbly with the whole sitting thing. “I know, it’s just… I don’t know. He was tired and he had baby pictures and…”

“Derek,” Laura said again, softly. “Honey.”

“No, no honey.” He dropped his head back against the recliner seat, where he’d been sitting until his nephew manifested evil powers of adorable and dragged him down onto the floor. “Don’t honey me. I know. It’s stupid.”

Laura shrugged and pulled the toy away from Ethan’s mouth. “I don’t think so. You talk to Callie about it?”

“No, I don’t have an appointment until next week. And I don’t need to go in until then,” Derek said before Laura could speak. “I had one bad night. Although not all of that was me. Somebody actually _did_ break into my apartment. It’s not paranoia if something actually happens.”

Laura sighed and took the ball away from Ethan again. She put a truck in front of him instead and gave it a light nudge, rolling it a few inches towards Derek. Ethan promptly grabbed it and began gnawing one of the chunky wheels.

Ethan reminded Derek a lot of Laura for somebody who didn’t talk yet. 

“Okay,” Laura said. “But I think you should talk to her about it then.”

“Laura,” Derek said and enjoyed the expression on her face.

“I know, I know,” she muttered. “Sorry. I’m trying.”

“Yes, you are,” Derek agreed and wasn’t at all surprised when he got an armful of toddler.

Laura smiled. “Just for that, you’re changing his diaper.”

 

 

Derek was pacing again. It wasn’t that he was loud about it. On the contrary, he was the quietest neighbour Stiles had ever had live in that apartment – and there had been a lot, it was like the Defence Against the Dark Arts of apartments. Stiles had lived here since he was eighteen and in six years, there have been seventeen different tenants. Derek’s lived there a year and a half and he’s the longest to stay yet.

No, Derek was quiet, especially at night. But there was a squeaky spot. Stiles had been up there when it was empty, between renters, paced across the room and bounced around like fucking Tigger where he thought it was to find it, but hadn’t heard a damn thing up there. Even with someone listening from his apartment, he couldn’t find it. But as soon as somebody moved in, bam, there it was again. Most of the time it didn’t even bother him much but Derek’s pacing pattern went right over it. It was worse than loud bed springs, even, which his last neighbours before Derek had very much enjoyed, because he alternated the pacing with moments where Stiles wasn’t sure what he was doing but he was quiet, and Stiles usually ended up _almost_ dozing off before the pacing started again. Honestly, he tended to just turn the television on or watched movies on his laptop until he passed out out, but…

But.

Stiles sighed and slid out of bed, picking his jeans up off the chair. He had one leg on the fire escape and one leg still in his apartment when his phone vibrated against his thigh. He situated himself more firmly on the balcony and looked at the text.

And of course it was Laura. _Please_.

Stiles immediately texted back, _I am on my fire escape! You almost killed me you bitch._

_You’re the best._

Stiles sighed and shoved his phone away, heading upstairs.

The window was unlocked again. Stiles flipped the strap of the holster around his waist but didn’t take the gun out yet. There was probably nothing going on – again – but still. And Stiles was going to have a nice long chat with Derek about leaving his windows open in the middle of the night in New York. He climbed carefully inside, as silently as he could, and nearly had a heart attack when he saw Derek standing next to the window, back pressed to the wall. He opened his mouth to say something because _he nearly had a heart attack and what the hell was it with the Hales trying to kill him tonight_ – and Derek clamped a hand over his mouth.

Well. That wasn’t how he expected this to go.

Derek help up a finger to his own lips, pointed into the apartment. A moment later, there was a heavy footstep and then an equally heavy, obvious silence.

Stiles nodded, pushed Derek’s hand down, and took his gun out as he started towards the back of the apartment. Derek grabbed his arm and yanked him to a stop. Stiles flailed and waved his free hand at his firearm like that would make Derek realize how utterly _stupid_ it was to grab somebody who was armed. Derek pointed at the window, like he expected Stiles to leave. Stiles rolled his eyes and took his badge out of his pocket, then gently-but-firmly shoved Derek back against the wall.

“Police,” Stiles said as he moved deeper into the apartment. It was dark but his eyes had adjusted enough to get him to where the bedroom was, reaching around the edge of the doorframe to hastily flick the light on.

And there was nobody there.

“The hell?” Stiles muttered. He checked the closet, found nothing, and made his way slowly through the apartment until he was back in the living room with Derek and the apartment was painfully, obviously empty.

He double checked the safety and put his gun away, then ran his hands over his hair. “Does your apartment have a portal to another dimension or something?”

Derek sighed, winced, and dropped his gaze. “Sorry. There’s – I was hearing things, I guess.”

“You mean the person walking around in your bedroom?” Stiles said flatly. “Because I heard that, dude. So go get some clothes together. I’m calling this in and you’re not staying here tonight.”

“What?”

“Look, I’m not gonna go home and sleep if I’m worried about you being viciously murdered. And I'm freaking exhausted. So call Laura or you can crash on my couch.”

Derek made a face. “Laura has an eight month old.”

Stiles shrugged. “Okay, sleep on my couch then. Hell, I’ll take the couch. It folds out, it’s cool. But you’re not staying here.”

Derek shook his head. “I’m just being paranoid. You don’t have to–”

“Uh, no, I don’t think you being paranoid would make me hear things. And while it would make sense if this place was actually haunted, I don’t believe in ghosts. And the apartment next to you is empty, you’re on the top floor and _my_ empty apartment is under yours.” Stiles pulled his phone out of his pocket and gave Derek an expectant look. “Seriously, go.”

 

 

Stiles’ couch was really uncomfortable. And, okay, it had been nice to sleep while his apartment was basically being treated like a crime scene, especially since Derek really didn’t want to wake Laura up at ugly o’clock in the morning, but now that he was awake, his back would never be able to support his own weight again.

He rolled over, groaned as quietly as he could when his vertebrae popped in ways that could not be normal or healthy, and wrapped his arms around a pillow. There were four of them that Stiles had dropped onto the pull-out sofa last night after making it up with clean sheets, a comforter and about six hundred blankets. Derek hadn’t had the heart to tell him that he was a hot sleeper and really didn’t need that many. It was a sweet gesture.

Lying on his stomach didn’t improve things, though, so Derek sighed and got up. Went to the bathroom as quietly as he could, came back out and folded all the six hundred blankets that he’d ended up kicking off in the night. When his stomach growled so loudly it practically echoed, he wandered into the kitchen. Maybe he could make Stiles breakfast.

Except the kid had no food. Like there was cheap-ass ramen and canned soup and a couple of frozen dinners and _that was it_. Derek had seen dorm rooms with more food.

“I didn’t have time to go grocery shopping yesterday,” Stiles’ sleep-roughened voice said behind him. “I seriously just came home and passed out. And then I woke up in the middle of the afternoon, ordered Chinese, and passed out again a couple hours later. It was glamorous, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Derek agreed and closed the fridge door, turning to face him. “I wanted – I was going to make you breakfast. To say thanks.”

“Really?” Stiles smiled, one eye still shut as he leaned his forehead against the doorframe. “That’s nice.”

“I–” Derek swallowed. “I have food. Upstairs. I could still – if you wanted to.”

“Okay.” Stiles closed his open eye, opened both, and blinked hard. “Wow, I’m gonna need about a gallon of coffee. I’m pretty sure that was the longest I’ve gone on the least amount of sleep and I’m counting my freshman spring break. Can you get a hangover from sleeping too much because wow. Yeah.”

Derek resisted the urge to snort. “C’mon, I’ll make you breakfast.”

Stiles shuffled upstairs in his slippers and pajama pants, nearly tripping up the stairs at one point. He was barely what you could call awake, his morning breath was atrocious even from a distance, he had eye boogers that were threatening to take over his eyelashes, and he kind of looked like he'd been drooling a little. Derek was pretty sure it was a bad thing that he found the idiot utterly adorable right now.

When they got upstairs, he sat Stiles down at his kitchen table and put a bottle of Gatorade and another of water in front of him.

“You’re dehydrated as hell, probably,” he said when Stiles blinked at him. “Headache, groggy, mouth feel like you’ve been sucking cotton balls?”

Stiles nodded.

“Let me guess, you’ve been running on caffeine and stubbornness?”

Another nod.

“Yeah, that’s what I though. Drink the Gatorade for now and when you’re done that and the water, we’ll talk about coffee.”

It wasn’t until he was putting bacon onto a foil lined cookie sheet that he realized what he’d done and he felt his ears burn. He wasn’t – it wasn’t his business what Stiles ate or drank or if he took care of himself. They were maybe sort of friendly for neighbours in New York, but they weren’t really _friends_ , let alone more.

He washed his hands, put the bacon in the oven, and turned as he dried them to face Stiles.

Who was halfway through the bottle of Gatorade.

“Grape’s not really my favourite, but thanks,” Stiles said with a smile. “I don’t – hospitals are hard on me sometimes. Bad memories. Scott used to make me eat and sleep and stuff when we lived together. He takes care of people. It's just kind of his nature. But apparently I’m still not amazing at being an adult.” Stiles raised the bottle in salute. “So thanks for this.”

 _Shit_ , Derek was blushing again. He cleared his throat and turned to get a pan of hashbrowns going. “Yeah. Um. Laura’s… well, she’s bossy as fuck. It’s – most our family lives out in California. We’re the closest family either of us has out here. Well, we were, for a long time, before Laura had Ethan.”

“And met the father of her child?” Stiles asked with a grin.

Derek shrugged. “Eh, yeah, he’s okay. Do you want eggs?”

 

 

So maybe Stiles had a little bit of a hopeless crush on the guy. It was cool, it was fine. He got used to that in high school when he was head-over-heels for Lydia Martin and she was never going to be into him. Lydia Martin, mind you, had been genius-level smart, was still the prettiest girl he’d ever seen, even after living in New York for six years, and pushed him backwards off the slide in kindergarten when he pulled her hair. She was then and will forever be amazing and getting completely shit-faced with her in his junior year and having her chew him out for his behaviour and then offer to let him make it up to her by being her _friend_ was the best decision he ever made. Even six years after Stiles left home, they still spoke regularly, and he could never regret anything with her, not really.

(Besides Nebraska. Nebraska was a _horrible_ idea that was Lydia’s fault and he’d insist upon that until the day he died. Nebraska. Lawn gnomes. Tequila. All Lydia’s fault.)

“But it took me ten years to get over Lydia,” Stiles said plaintively, leaning against Isaac’s shoulder. “Ten years! I loved her when I still thought girls were gross. I’ve had three serious relationships, Isaac. I dated the same guy for three years. I thought about buying Ben a ring one day. He had a _drawer_.”

“I know,” Isaac said, gingerly patting him on the shoulder. “I was there.”

Isaac was more of Scott’s friend in high school than Stiles’. Isaac’s father was an abusive asshole that liked to take his anger out on Isaac and locked him in a deep freeze as punishment. Stiles’ father arrested him when Scott’s mother talked to him in the ER after a particularly bad night that ended with Isaac’s wrist broken. Isaac was angry at both Stilinskis for a long time and Stiles was pissed thinking Scott was replacing him. It took them a while to warm up to each other.

And, erm, a surprising bond over hopeless crushes on Lydia and random makeout sessions in Stiles' old Jeep.  

“But why?” Stiles asked. “He’s so freaking pretty. It’s not fair, Isaac. He’s like a supermodel on steroids. Do you think it’s steroids? No, he doesn’t walk like he’s on steroids.”

“You cannot tell that by how someone walks.”

Stiles shook his head. “No, he walks like–” He gestured down below his waist. “Things are big. You know?”

“Oh my God,” Isaac said faintly. “I hate you so much right now. I’m never letting you drink again.”

“But _why_?” Stiles wailed and buried his head in Isaac’s shoulder.

Isaac sighed and patted him on the shoulder. “Yeah, yeah, I know. C’mon, this is your floor. Let’s pour you into bed.”

 

 

It was a beautiful day, sun shining and warm, probably one of the last warm days of fall. Derek threw open every single window in his apartment, even the tiny one in the bathroom that he had to break a sweat to open, airing the place out while he cleaned.

That was how he heard the screaming.

For a moment, he froze, as sure as if ice had been injected into his veins, freezing his muscles from the inside out – and it only got worse when he realized it was coming from the apartment downstairs. By the time he realized he was moving, he was already halfway down the stairs of the fire escape, carrying the baseball bat from under his bed. Stiles’ window was open, thank God, so he swung over as quietly as he could and crept towards the doorway of the living room, then carefully looked around the doorway.

Stiles was perched on the kitchen counter, looking completely fine and dandy until he saw Derek and nearly fell off the counter. “Oh my _God_ , dude, what the hell?”

“What happened?” Derek asked. “I heard you yell. Are you okay?”

Stiles made a face and pointed at an overturned paper cup on the floor. “Fucking spider. Probably deadly, like a black widow or something. It’s the size of my freaking _hand_.”

“Seriously?” Derek rolled his eyes and leaned the baseball bat against the wall. “You live in New York.”

“Yeah and I can squash a cockroach with the best of them but spiders aren’t a thing that’s going to happen, okay?”

"Want me to kill it so you can get off the counter?” Derek asked dryly.

“No!” Stiles flailed and almost unbalanced himself again. “You can’t kill it. It’s bad luck. And then all its friends and relatives will get pissed at me and decide to nest in my apartment and then it’ll be the spiderpocalypse.”

Derek stared at him. “Seriously. Can I throw it off the balcony?”

“Spiderpocalypse.”

“I – _seriously_?” Derek stared at the cup on the floor. “There are holes in this.”

“I didn’t want to suffocate it. Can you just get rid of it? My legs are falling asleep.”

Seriously. Derek rubbed his forehead, then grabbed a piece of junk mail off Stiles’ mess of a kitchen table. He was a _cop_ , for Christ’s sake. How the hell was he afraid of a bug? And, okay, Derek had some irrational phobias himself. He wasn’t very fond of his balcony at night, he couldn’t keep candles in the apartment, he was just generally paranoid and a little anxious. He knew that. He was working on it. But it was a _spider_.

Except – except that Stiles was chewing on his bottom lip and staring at him with huge amber eyes and Derek –

And Derek was a sap, he realized, dumping the spider into Mrs. Gonzales downstair’s flower pot a moment later. He was an absolute sucker for those eyes. Pathetic, really. What kind of idiot took a spider _downstairs_ because Stiles was convinced it’d come back down the fire escape stairs and start the… well. Spiderpocalypse.

“Okay, the big, scary spider is all gone,” Derek said as he walked back into the kitchen. Then he paused. Stiles was… still sitting on the counter. “You gonna get down any time soon?”

“Throw that shit out first, then we’ll talk,” Stiles replied, hooking a cupboard door open with his bare foot.

Derek shook his head and crossed to toss the cup and flyer away. “How on earth are you alive?”

“I was handling it.” Stiles knocked the cupboard door shut with his foot. “I would have eventually… got the broom. Once, you know, I stopped shaking like the brave, capable dude that I am.”

Derek stepped a little closer, close enough for Stiles’ knee to brush against his hip. And now he felt guilty. “You crawled through my window when you thought I was being murdered. I have very few doubts about your bravery.” Derek took a slow breath. He didn’t – he wasn’t good at apologizing, but he knew when he was wrong about something. Sometimes.  “Everybody has fears. Sorry about – sorry for trivializing yours. I shouldn’t have.”

Stiles smiled, slowly, bright as the fucking sun. “We’re good. I think you returned the favour, anyways. Even if it was only a spider. My hero,” he drawled, exaggerated and over-dramatic.

Derek laughed and leaned in a little, because he couldn’t help it, was apparently drawn to Stiles like he was literally the sun, and then – and then he kissed Stiles. Stiles’ mouth was soft in surprise, a tiny noise escaping him, and it was kind of amazing for the heartbeat before Derek realized what he was doing and jolted backwards.

“Fuck, shit, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he said, taking another step away from Stiles. “That wasn’t – I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

Stiles blinked at him, lifting his fingers to touch his own mouth. He looked awestruck and Derek wished he was allowed to put that look on him as often as possible. “I – what?”

“You have a boyfriend. I shouldn’t have kissed you. I’m–”

“Wait, _what_?” Stiles interrupted. “No, I don’t. I’m not seeing anyone right now. I haven’t gone on a date in months. My social life’s been kind of pathetic, really.”

Derek rubbed his hand over the back of his neck and swallowed, hard, barely daring to breathe. “You – there was a guy on Saturday – I mean, I’m not judging you or anything, but it looked like you were – like you knew each other.”

“Ohh.” Stiles flushed, dark red and low on his cheeks. “No. Um. No. Isaac’s a friend. We dated when we were like sixteen but we were terrible together. I’m just… kind of a clingy drunk. Damn it. Can we, like, can we try that again?”

Derek took a step forwards, slowly, and eased his hand onto Stiles’ thigh. “Yeah,” he says, his voice surprising him with its rasp. “Yeah, I think we can do that.”

 

 

Stiles could hear Derek pacing again. And he had to work in like five hours and if he went upstairs or invited Derek downstairs, he’d – okay, let’s be real. He’d probably spend the entirety of those five hours exploring every inch of Derek’s body. With his tongue.

He sighed, rolled over, and grabbed his phone off the nightstand.

 _Need me to come check things out?_ he sent Derek.

_No._

_Okay. Do you want to talk? Because I’m good at talking._

_Really? Because I didn’t notice._ It was sort of impressive how sarcastic Derek could be through text message. _I can’t sleep. Everything just feels wrong some nights._

Stiles bit down on his lip, worrying at it for a moment before sending back, _I had panic attacks after my mom died. For a couple years._

_My ex-girlfriend tried to burn my parents’ house down while I was sleeping in it. I have anxiety issues. I woke you up, didn’t I?_

_It’s cool, dude. And when I said talk, I didn’t mean you have to talk about anything serious. We can talk about whatever shit you want. TV. Food. Me taking you out on Friday. The weird mole on my back I have to contort myself to look at with a hand mirror to make sure isn’t growing or turning funny colours._

_I know,_ Derek sent back. Then, a moment later, _Thanks._

 

 

Stiles texted him.

A lot.

Good morning, and good night. “Do you like cheesecake?” and “Scott glued me to a chair once” and “I’m allergic to ragweed.” And, on one memorable occasion as Derek was running out of the building late for a therapy appointment, “I like those jeans. A lot. They make your ass look amazing. All of your jeans do, though. Or your ass makes your jeans look amazing. Either way. Nice jeans.”

Derek – Derek kind of liked it. Stiles worked a lot, long hours and strange shifts, and Derek wasn’t much better. He slept easier in the daylight than in the darkness and his schedule reflected that, since he could write whenever and wrote better when insomnia wasn’t making him _more_ paranoid than usual. But he and Stiles hadn’t been bumping into each other very much the last couple weeks with work schedules and deadlines and it’d – this was nice, at least. At least they got to talk, even if it wasn’t the same as pressing Stiles up against a wall and kissing him until he lost all his words. And they had a date, tomorrow night, Friday night. Stiles had asked him out, and they had a date for Friday.

“Come on, Derek, it’s only for a few days.”

Or they had, rather, before Laura – because it was always Laura’s fault and this time was no exception.

“Five!” Derek said through his teeth. “Five days, Laura. That’s pretty much a week, Laura! Does this place look baby-proofed, _Laura_?”

“So come stay at the house instead, _Derek_.”

“You know I can’t. Not yet.” Derek ran a hand through his hair, leaning against the kitchen counter. “I’m working on it, I promise, but I can’t yet.”

“I know. Sorry. Look, I’ll bring over the pack-n-play. You can stick him in there while you shower or cook or whatever and he’ll veg out just fine. Toss him a couple of those fucking God awful noisy toys you like to buy him and he’ll be good to go. And we have a mattress for it so he can sleep in there too.”

Derek pressed his fingers against his eyes. “He’s okay doing that?”

Laura laughed. “Babe, the kid has fallen asleep on the floor playing more times than I should probably admit. And we use it at mom’s all the time. C’mon, you know how I pack. And you have a key. If I forget anything, you can just go over and grab it. Ethan’s a good baby. And you’re a good uncle. I know you can do it.”

Derek sighed. “Yeah, well. It’s not like I’m going to say no, am I? But you owe me big.”

 

 

“She kind of cries a lot,” Scott said from the other end of the line. “I don’t think she likes me.”

Stiles was somewhat distracted with his current clothing crisis but that made him pause, pulling back to stare at his phone for a long moment like that would make Scott’s words make sense. “Dude… she’s three weeks old.”

“I noticed that, Stiles. You know, when I was there when she was born."

“Okay but she’s like brand new, dude. I’m pretty sure you and Allison are like her entire world. Literally. And don’t front, I saw that picture of you feeding her at three in the morning that Allison posted on Facebook. If you think somebody could look at you like that and not love you, you’re stupider than your hair sophomore year.”

“Hey,” Scott said indignantly, but Stiles was not wrong, okay? Scott had the haze of nostalgia. Stiles had pictures. “I just – I don’t want to be like my dad. I don’t want to get this wrong.”

Stiles threw a shirt onto the bed. “Scott McCall, do I need to fly to California to smack some sense into you?”

“Yes,” Scott said without hesitating. “Uncle Stiles needs to visit more often.”

Stiles got a little case of the warm fuzzies at being called Uncle Stiles. He wanted it on T-shirts and mugs and picture frames and he was well-expecting many an art project to be sent to him when Sienna got a little older. He was so going to be her favourite uncle. And he couldn’t care less that Allison was an only child like him and Scott. He was still going to be Sienna’s favourite uncle.

“Yeah, well,” Stiles said, cleaning his throat. “I don’t have any time off for a bit but as soon as I can, yeah. But dude. You’re Melissa McCall’s son. Melissa is the one who raised you, the one who made you who you are. Got it? Or do I need to call _your mom_ to smack some sense into you?”

“I’m good,” Scott said dryly. “I get it. What are you doing anyways? You’ve been banging around the entire time we’ve been talking.”

“Um.” Stiles paused in the middle of opening another drawer. “I kind of sort of maybe a little have a date?”

“You finally get the balls to ask Derek out?”

“I hate you.”

“I know. Happy for you, dude.”

Stiles smiled, stupidly happy. “Yeah. Me too.”

 

 

“Oh. Are you okay?” Stiles asked. “I mean, is everything okay?”

Derek looked down at the baby on his hip and sighed. He hated this. He really, really hated this. Not Ethan. He loved Ethan a stupid amount. But the situation sucked. “Yeah, everything’s fine. Just… something came up.”

“Okay,” Stiles said uncertainly. “As long as nothing’s wrong.”

Ethan chose that moment to lunge towards Derek’s phone and let loose a stream of baby babble. Derek juggled him away, brushing his lips across Ethan’s forehead when he fussed that Derek wouldn’t let his iPhone be used as a chew toy.

“Was that a baby?” Stiles asked slowly. “Did you kidnap a baby? Because I should probably know if you kidnapped a baby. That’s like a crime, you know. And I’m in the anti-criming business. I should know these things.”

“It’s my nephew,” he said flatly. “Laura was gonna leave him with her sister-in-law but they all got chicken pox and she doesn’t want him exposed.”

Stiles swore softly. “Man, that sucks. I thought kids all got vaccinated these days.”

“Yeah, same. Anyways, I have him for a few days." 

“Well.” Stiles hesitated. “I’ve got a brand new goddaughter slash honorary niece. I could use some practice time with a baby, probably. Some hands on experience… except pretend I said that in a way that didn’t come out creepy. I could come upstairs and hang out with you guys. We could order a pizza, watch a movie. I have the entire Disney animated canon on DVD.”

Derek smiles slowly. “Bring Tarzan.”

 

 

Stiles put away two more slices of pizza than Derek and talked with his mouth full, talked with his hands and shoulders and most of his body, honestly, so fast that Derek could barely keep up with his train of thought. He talked to the baby constantly, too, while Ethan babbled and made noise back, whispered trivia in his ear while they watched the movie. Ethan was probably too young to get any enjoyment out of it, but Derek was kind of hopelessly charmed.

He put the baby down in the pack-n-play in his bedroom, checking the list Laura left three times to make sure he did everything right. Ethan made noise, a little, and Derek’s heart kind of seized in his chest, but Laura said that was okay so after a moment of standing and watching him, Derek eased out of the room.

“He out?” Stiles asked, putting plates into the dishwasher.

“I think so. He’s… kind of fussy, I think?” Derek leaned against the counter. “You don’t have to do that.”

Stiles stacked the last plate away and closed the dishwasher. “It’s not a big deal, numbskull. You did dinner. I did dishes. It’s all good. Is this the first time you’ve been alone with him?”

Derek shrugged. “I baby-sit sometimes, but not for this long. It’s just…”

Stiles grinned. “Yeah. We could watch another movie?"

Derek smiled back.

 

 

There was a distinct possibility that Stiles was going insane.

There was a distinct possibility that Stiles had _gone_ insane.

He could smell Derek’s soap. He was close enough to feel the heat radiating off Derek’s body and there was a part of him that sort of wanted to spend the entire winter snuggled up to Derek because holy _hell_ he ran hot and that was a _thing_ Stiles could get behind. Or in front of. On top of. Underneath. And then there was a larger part of him that was far more concerned with the fact that his dick was hard enough to cut sheetrock and he wasn’t even really touching Derek.

He really wanted to be really touching Derek, okay?

“Fuck it,” he muttered and grabbed Derek’s arm. He lifted it until it was around his own shoulders and then settled down against Derek’s side.

“Comfortable?” Derek asked, sounding amused.

“Almost.” Stiles slouched a little more against Derek and hauled Derek’s thigh across his lap, fingers curled behind the bend of his knee. “There. Much better.”

“You sure you don’t want to shove me around anymore?”

Stiles patted Derek’s thigh. “Nope, you’re good.”

Much better indeed. Derek was _big_. As tall as Stiles and just… big. Stiles was broad at the shoulders, inherited his build and big bones from his father, but Derek was… okay, he was kind of ripped and Stiles wasn’t just saying that because he’d seen Derek shirtless. Derek was heavy, his thigh the best kind of weight on Stiles’ lap, and thick with muscles and Stiles was seriously rock hard right now.

Derek turned his head and brushed his lips against Stiles’ ear. “You’re squirming,” he murmured.

“Sorry.” Stiles shifted once and then made himself hold still. He was probably going to explode. But he held still.

For a good ten minutes, even. Stuff happened in the movie. Something blew up. There was violence, language, brief nudity. Or at least Stiles assumed there was, but he didn’t see a damn thing that happened on the screen.

Finally, Derek laughed, soft and low, and turned again to kiss the curve of Stiles’ jaw. “You’re practically vibrating out of your skin. Breathe. Relax.”

Easy for him to say.

“You relax,” Stiles snapped back irritably and rubbed his hand up Derek’s thigh, getting maybe just a little higher than exactly necessary. Derek _inhaled_ , sharp and sudden and right against Stiles’ ear, and twitched. If that wasn’t interesting, Stiles didn’t know what was. And he got past the child safety filters on his computer when he was thirteen, was Lydia Martin’s best friend and partner in crime for years, and once wrote an essay on Land Before Time in college.

Stiles knew interesting.

He grinned, just a little, and scratched his nail up the length of the inseam of Derek’s jeans. Derek didn’t twitch this time but he did go very, very still and that was very, very good, too.

Then Derek bit down, hard, on Stiles’ neck and that was it, he was done. Game over.

“Oh my god,” he said and laughed at himself. “You win the foreplay chicken.”

Derek went still. “Um. I wasn’t trying – were you?”

Stiles grinned. “Maybe a little. Just a tiny bit. Just for fun.” When he turned to look at Derek, Derek was staring at his knees like he thought he was about to get in trouble. It was kind of stupidly adorable and Stiles’ heart thumped in a way that was so not normal. “So if you weren’t… did you get a little carried away?” he asked, leaning closer to speak right next to Derek’s ear. What was good for the goose and all that. “When you bit me, I mean? Gotta admit, I kinda liked that. _Hey_ , new kink.”

“You’re an idiot,” Derek said.

Stiles slid a hand slowly up the inside of Derek’s thigh. “You’re hot for it. What does that say about you?”

“That I’m insane,” Derek murmured, his eyes fluttering closed as Stiles squeezed a hand over him.

Don’t get him wrong, Stiles liked having Derek spread all over him and he added that to the many, many positions he planned to debauch Derek in. But the angle was awkward and he really didn’t wanted to have to work with awkwardness right now. He wanted to – okay, he kind of just wanted to orgasm with/on Derek, but he could be patient. He could totally be patient. He _wanted_ to be patient, wanted to explore and touch and _watch_.

“Okay, c’mon.” Stiles slid backwards on the couch, tugged Derek's leg over his until his knee pressed against the back of the couch and gave Stiles room to move between them. Then he grabbed Derek by the backs of both knees and yanked him down. Derek _gasped_ and Stiles grinned. That was very much a noise he liked. “Take this off.” Stiles shoved his fingers under the hem of Derek’s T-shirt. “Let me see you.”

Derek turned _pink_ and that was kind of awesome. Stiles grinned right up until he pulled his shirt off. Then his brain whited out for a moment because holy crap. Stiles wasn’t actually aware it was possible to look like that without the aid of Photoshop. He kind of suspected Derek had more abs than human beings were supposed to have. There was like a twelve-pack situation going on.

“Dude, you are – wow.” Stiles shook his head. “ _Nice_. Man. Holy crap, wow, you are pretty. C’mere, I totally need to kiss you right now.”

“Okay,” Derek mumbled as Stiles slipped a hand under his neck.

Derek kind of hummed into this kiss, his own hand sliding under Stiles’ shirt so that his palm was hot and heavy against the base of his spine. Stiles – now he could get used to the way Derek’s eyelashes fluttered against his cheeks as his eyes closed, the way his face went sort of stupidly gorgeously soft in the moments when Stiles pulled back between kisses just to watch Derek’s face as he touched him. Hands on his face, thumbs stroking across those damn eyebrows, the soft, ridiculously delicate corners of his mouth, carefully pressing his mouth open so Stiles could stroke inside – not that Derek was protesting or that Stiles wouldn’t stop if Derek made any sign he didn’t want to do this. Not in a heartbeat. But he liked to… he didn’t know. Touch. Hold, maybe.

Maybe he just wanted to get his hands on Derek in as many ways as possible.

“You’re kind of beautiful,” Stiles murmured when he pulled away to lick a stripe up the side of Derek’s throat. “I like the way you breathe when I kiss you. And the way your face looks right now, that’s kind of awesome,” he said as he pressed an open-mouthed kiss against the curve of Derek’s shoulder, traced his mouth over the strangely fragile-feeling skin stretched over the bones of his collarbone. “Kinda just like you though, hope you know that.”

“Okay,” Derek repeated, breathless and higher than usual and a little distracted, like he couldn’t focus.

Stiles really needed to get his mouth on Derek’s abs because they were unreal – like he wasn’t actually sure they were real and not a figment of his imagination. And maybe he had a bit of an oral fixation but whatever. So he slid down a little and leaned down to press his open mouth against Derek’s stomach.

And Derek went _rigid_ and jerked, shoving himself up on his elbows. “Don’t. Don’t – I – just don’t–”

Stiles fell off the couch in his rush to get the fuck off Derek because holy crap that was not a good reaction.

“Shit, are you okay?” Derek asked, reaching down to cup his hand around the back of Stiles’ neck.

“Are you?” Stiles covered Derek’s hand with his because he didn’t know where it was okay to touch and he hadn’t had to – it’s not that he wasn’t careful with Ben because he was a cop’s kid, okay, and he’d had numerous conversations with his dad about consent, but Ben didn’t _need_ it, had a boatload of other issues, but was relatively uncomplicated when it came to sex, and they were together for so long that he forgot how to do this, he hadn’t needed to – not since _Isaac_ and Isaac’s asshole dad and holy crap what if Stiles had completely screwed this up because he was inconsiderate and –

“My ex used to do that,” Derek blurted, fingers tightening for a second on Stiles’ neck. “Sorry. I should I have told you. It just – it’s been a while. I – sorry.”

Stiles rubbed his thumb down the inside of Derek’s wrist where the skin was soft and vulnerable. He cleared his throat. “I - I don’t like being tied down. Hands, like, if you wanna hold me down, that’s okay. But being tied down makes me feel trapped and I panic. Can’t do it.”

He moved back up onto the couch and sat down between Derek’s legs again, but kept his hands right above Derek’s knees. “Last person I dated, we broke up about a year ago. We were together for three years. I had a couple dates after him but I’m kind of bad at casual sex. I got tested three months ago when I had a physical. Everything was normal and I haven’t done anything since except with, well, you.” Stiles shrugged. “Oh, and I’m pan.”

Derek exhaled. “My ex-girlfriend tried to murder me and my family when I was nineteen. I had – I had a couple rough years. Slept around a lot. Drank. Did some other stuff and I kind of – I fucked myself up. And I’ve been dealing with that. And I wasn’t – while I was trying to get my head back on, I wasn’t … you know.”

“Ready?” Stiles supplied and tried his hardest to be serious for once in his life.

Derek nodded. “Yeah. I get – I’m clean. Bi.”

Stiles runs his hands slowly up the outsides of Derek’s thighs. “Okay. Do you want to keep going? S’okay if you don’t.”

Derek swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Yeah. Yes. Um.” He coughed. cleared his throat and blushed again and, yup, it was still adorable. “Very much so.”

“Me too,” Stiles said and reached for the fly of Derek’s jeans. “So how about we – how about we try this?”

“You – you don’t have to.”

“I know.” Stiles popped the button of Derek’s jeans, slid the zipper _slowly_  down over the bulge of Derek’s still hard cock, and slipped his hand inside. “Except the thing is I _really_ want to know what you look like when you come.”

Derek exhaled, loudly, and nodded once, short and sharp, like he was going to fall apart if he didn’t hold himself still.

Stiles was definitely looking forward to watching that happen.

 

 

What the fuck was wrong with his neck? Derek grumbled himself awake and shoved himself up against the arm of the couch. He rolled his shoulders to relieve some of the pressure, wincing at the ugly crack. God, he was getting too old for this.

Wait. He looked down at the couch, at the blanket that had been tucked in around him. There was a Stiles there when he fell asleep. Stiles had curled up next to him after Derek had gotten the feeling back in his limbs and returned the favour of a very, very nice orgasm and they’d attempted to finish that movie – okay, really just passed out in front of it. He probably went home when Derek fell asleep or when he woke up… and there was absolutely no reason that should make him just a little sad. Better for Stiles to sleep in his own bed than end up cramped and sore from passing out on Derek’s couch and –

There was somebody talking in his bedroom. And Derek knew he was paranoid, but his _nephew_ was in there and he was off the couch in two seconds flat, tripping over the blanket and barely managing not to crash into the coffee table.

He threw open the bedroom door and – and there was Stiles. Standing in front of the window holding Ethan and mumbling to him.

“Yeah, and strawberry milkshakes are by far the superior flavour. Unless you can get banana. Banana is awesome. It’s very much the best. My mom used to make peanut butter and banana milkshakes and they were amazing, little dude. I have her recipe somewhere. When you can have solid foods and allergenics and all that, I’ll dig it out for you.”

Derek dropped back against the doorframe. He’d say something, let Stiles know he was there. Just… not yet. In a minute.

Stiles shifted, turning until Derek could see the curve of his cheek, but still didn’t notice him. “Nobody quite makes your favourites like your mom, though, huh? Moms are just special like that.”

“Stiles,” Derek said softly.

Stiles cursed and spun towards him. “Holy mother of – you scared me half to death.”

“Sorry.” Derek crossed to the window and cupped his hand over the back of Ethan’s head. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah. I just got up to pee and thought I’d check on him before I woke you up and somebody here was not at all asleep.” Stiles grinned, swaying slowly back and forth. He had one finger in Ethan’s mouth, apparently completely nonplussed by the sheer volume of baby slobber Ethan produced. “Somebody was wide awake and making noises like crazy. So we decided to have ourselves a little stroll, look at the stars, have a man to man conversation. Also I think he’s cutting a tooth. You got any of that numby gunk?”

“Think so. Laura packed half her house.”

The numbing gel helped. Ethan settled down much easier this go around and was soon making breathy little noises in his sleep that were absolutely adorable and simultaneously terrifying.

Stiles rubbed at his eyes. “I should probably get home. I have no idea what time it is.”

“Late.” Derek swallowed. “You could, um, you could stay here? I mean, just to sleep. You could sleep here. If you want to?”

“Only if you promise to make me breakfast again tomorrow morning.”

Derek gave Stiles one of his shirts to sleep in because Stiles' t-shirt had had an unfortunate accident earlier, and stripped down to his own boxers. It was… not unawkward. And Derek was nervous and how dumb was that? But Stiles asked which side he wanted and then crawled right in and made himself comfortable, waited until Derek settled in to reach out and slide his hand up Derek’s naked side.

And yeah. It could be a lot worse.

 

 

Stiles didn’t always fully believe he was a good person. He was straight up mean sometimes and too sarcastic for his own good. He loved his dad more than pretty much anyone in the world, he still called his grandmother because his mom was an only child and his grandfather was dead and the only link they both had to his mother now was each other, pretty much, and Scott, Scott was his brother. Scott and him, they were family, and he loved Allison and Sienna and Scott’s mom because so were they. Lydia and Isaac were both still people he’d do very, very bad things to keep safe if he needed to.

But the eighth cousin four times removed he had on Facebook? Eh. Allison’s creepy mother and pretty much entire family? Just no. He’d stay out of the way when they visited, thank you, which luckily wasn’t often because Allison didn’t get along with them well. Scott’s frat buddies from college? He could care less about them, honestly.

He lied, a lot, because he was lazy and he didn’t really like people sometimes, and no, he didn’t want to see pictures of your kid’s kindergarten graduation, thanks.

Stiles played with the cover of the file in front of him, absently gnawing on a pen. He didn’t always fully believe he was a good person… but this was making him feel scummy as hell.

“I’m a horrible person,” Stiles muttered and flipped the file open. “I’m going to hell.”

 

 

Ethan was fussy. He’d clung to Derek like a baby spider monkey, cried in a way he hadn’t since he’d been here – and Derek's neighbours were going to _love_ him for that – and he was warm. Never higher than ninety-nine or one hundred, but that was… well, that wasn't normal, was it? He’d texted Laura, searched the internet to reassure himself waiting for her reply, then gave Ethan baby Tylenol and more of the numbing gel when Laura said to. Ethan fell asleep eventually, passed out against Derek’s shoulder, but he was still making noises in his sleep.

And Derek was a paranoid idiot. The kid was _teething_ , he wasn’t going to explode or something. It was all normal baby behaviour, Laura and the internet both said, he hadn’t screwed up or done something wrong. There was absolutely no reason to be this nervous about something that was completely normal.

Which was why he only sat down on the edge of his bed for a moment. He was just going to sit there for a moment until he was sure Ethan was asleep and wasn’t going to… explode or something. He’d sit there, just for a minute, then he’d go out into the living room and watch TV or read or something. It wasn’t that late and Stiles might make it home early enough that they could spent some time together.

The next thing he knew, he rolled over and almost fell off the side of the bed. The way too bright numbers  on the alarm clock said it was almost midnight and he’d apparently been asleep for two hours.

Derek groaned softly and sat up, cracking his back. He really needed to stop falling asleep in weird places. He got up, checked on Ethan who was snoozing like a champ, and went out into the living room. The window out onto the fire escape was firmly latched, the front door was locked up tight and the alarm was set. Okay. So everything was good, and he should probably just text Stiles that he didn’t need to come over and go to bed. Derek turned around to head into his room where he’d left his phone after frantically texting Laura about Ethan’s teething.

When Derek was six or seven, there was a bad light switch in the bathroom in their basement. The cover had broken and been taken off and if you weren’t careful and touched it with wet hands, you got the weirdest feeling of everything just being unsettled in your body.

Being tazed was a lot like that, only about a million times worse.

 

 

Stiles had really only skimmed through Derek’s file to find his ex’s name, because there were some lines even he felt weird crossing. But the name itself made him freeze and check twice, but, no, apparently Allison’s crazy aunt and Derek’s crazy ex-girlfriend were one and the same. Small world.

Kate Argent was batshit fucking insane, Stiles realized only a couple pages into her file. History of arson, dropped out of college her sophomore year with rumours of an affair with a professor who, of course, was still teaching – Stiles made a face at that, nice double standard there – and, wow, that was a long list of stalking incidents. And – oh, fuck. He grabbed his phone and dialled so fast he almost broke a button. The resulting phone call was probably one of the most frustrating phone calls of his life.

“You’re kidding me,” he said, hoping it was actually true, that this was some kind of twisted joke. “She’s in New York and you didn’t think it was important to actually notify the person who has a restraining order on her and _who sent her to jail_?”

He hung up so frustrated he could barely speak and immediately phoned Derek, tapping his fingers against the desk as he waited for Derek to answer. And waited. And waited.

And waited.

 

 

Kate smiled the same as she did when Derek met her when he was nineteen. “Hey, sweetie,” she said, easy, like she hadn’t just fucking tazed him.

He hadn’t passed out but it was a near thing. He’d hit the floor, but barely felt it. Lost his breath, but thought, vaguely, that it was such a terribly understated way to say that when it was like everything in his body just _stopped_ , when he couldn’t force himself to inhale and his lungs burned, contracted, like the oxygen had disappeared from the room.

“Hurts, huh?” Kate said, crouching down next to him. “Wow. You grew up in all the right places, didn't you?” she said, apparently to herself. “I’m feeling kind of conflicted here, Derek. I don’t know whether to kill you… or lick you.”

Derek groaned, rolling away from her and dragging himself towards the couch. It was hard – he was still fucking twitching, and she walked as he moved, like she had all night to wait for him to twitch his way across the floor. Maybe she did. Maybe her plans for the night were to spend it torturing Derek until he broke. Years of paranoia, years insomnia, years of not being able to fucking think for fear because of _her_ , and she had walked right into his so-called safe place. He caught the arm of the couch and started to drag himself up – and she slammed him with another blast of electricity. He went down hard, clipping his temple on the corner of the coffee table with enough force to make his vision white out.

“– missed you,” Kate said and Derek focused enough to realize he missed something. He was pretty sure it didn’t matter anyways. “I really did. You just listened so well. Such a good boy. You always looked so pretty when you were doing exactly what I told you.”

She kicked the coffee table to the side, sending it skidding halfway across his living room. Derek, for a half second, hoped it didn’t wake Ethan up. He didn’t – he couldn’t handle the thought of her getting her hands on him. For a second, he was incredibly grateful that Stiles was supposed to come over after work, because if Kate killed him, if she killed Derek, Stiles would find Ethan.

Then Kate grabbed him by the hair and yanked, hauling him down onto the floor. He hit the ground hard, still twitching, his muscles spasming against his control.

“It’s hard, you know,” she said as she stepped one foot over him, standing straddling his waist. “Finding someone like you. Someone who is just _so_ eager to please.”

Kate lowered herself to her knees, putting her weight on his stomach. “Did you miss me? Do you miss having someone boss you around, baby?”

“Fucking crazy,” Derek muttered. “Got over you a long time ago.”

“Really, you have?” Kate ran a slow hand up his chest. She stopped at his throat and pressed down, slowly, but hard, cutting off his air supply until he wheezed under her hand. “Do you remember all the things we used to do? God, we were crazy. Although I guess neither of us are teenagers anymore. It’s been a long ten years.” She grinned, bright and easy, and pulled her hand away. Derek gasped in a breath. “I think I’m still as flexible. Do you still get hard if a stiff breeze blows?”

Oh for the love of –

“Are you going to torture me or are you just gonna talk me to death?” Derek snapped, rolling his eyes.

“Oh, sweetie. I don’t wanna torture you. I just wanna… catch up. Come on, remember all the fun we had together?”

He remembered a lot of things. He especially remembered waking up with his house on fire.

Derek swallowed and slowly reached up to touch her elbow. She raised an eyebrow but didn’t move. “You want – you want to catch up, you should probably stop tazing me before I have a heart attack.”

Kate narrowed her eyes. “You know, you’d have a point... if I was an idiot.”

Derek wasn’t really one to talk, but Kate was fucked up in the head. She tried to murder him and his family, tried to burn him alive while he was sleeping and would have done the same to his parents and Laura and anyone else if they’d been there. He’d spent years rebuilding himself after waking up with his parents' house burning down around him. But for a moment, he was sad for her and he thought maybe that was okay.

“Katie,” he said, sighing. “This isn’t going to end well.”

She blinked, once. “You’re right. It’s not.”

He hadn’t seen it before, but somehow it wasn’t a surprise at all when she slammed the gun into his jaw. She was always trigger-happy, always got just a little too much pleasure out of those silly shoot-‘em-up games at the carnival, spent more time than healthy at the shooting range. The white-hot pain that bloomed through his face was still somehow sudden at the same time and his vision went blurry.

“For you,” she added.

Derek breathed in, long and slow. Kate and he dated for six months. Then he’d spent years playing every single moment of their relationship back in his head trying to figure out what he did wrong that made her want to kill him. And the thing is – the thing is, Derek could never figure that out.

But that didn’t mean that he didn’t know how Kate Argent ticked.

He moves his jaw carefully, cracking his neck. “You know, if you’re going to kill me, you could at least kiss me first. I mean, it has been ten years.”

Kate traced the muzzle of the gun over the hollow of his throat. “Thought you were over me.”

He swallowed. “Pretty sure I’m under you right now.”

“Yeah, yeah, you are,” she said and bent down. “Right where you’re supposed to be.”

For just a moment, Derek let himself be relieved that when she kissed him, he felt absolutely nothing. No buzz, no spark, no warmth. It was – he was just relieved that he wasn’t hung up on her, like that.

Then he flipped her and slammed her arm into the floor. The gun flew out of her hand, spinning a few feet away. She lunged for it as he did, closed her hand around it a second before him. And then –

And then he wasn’t sure what happened but his ears were ringing. His ears _hurt_ with the ringing and he didn’t –

Kate wasn’t moving.

And she was bleeding.

“Oh, fuck.” Derek jerked the gun away from her limp hand and tossed it across the room, grabbed the tazer out of her pocket and threw that too, along with a wicked-looking knife – and fuck, how long _was_ she planning on torturing him for? Then he ripped his shirt over his head and shoved it down against her stomach as hard as he could. “Okay, we’re gonna – we’re gonna call 911. You’re going to be okay.”

Kate exhaled a shaky, breathy laugh. “Sweetie. No. Tell… tell Allison I’m sorry. She had a baby. God… never got to… meet Sienna. Tell her I’m sorry.”

Derek spent a long time hating Kate Argent. He’d mostly gotten over it. Or he thought he had. He didn’t think he’d ever hated her more than the moment she bled to death under his hands. He hated her a lot for that.

He called 911 and kind of forgot he was supposed to stay on the line when he heard Ethan crying. He wasn’t – his hands were _covered_ in blood, but Ethan was practically screaming, probably traumatized beyond belief, and Derek couldn’t leave him to scream while he was waiting for the police. So he washed his hands, scrubbed off as much of the blood as he could as quickly as he could, and went to get the baby.

Ethan was barely calmed down, head tucked under Derek’s chin, when his apartment door flew open.

There was a rush of people and Derek wasn’t entirely sure he was processing things right, because people were yelling and talking to him, but most of it wasn’t really getting through.

“Can somebody call Stiles Stilinski?” he asked whoever was closest. “He’s a cop and he lives downstairs. If he hears about this he’s gonna – he’ll worry.”

 

 

Stiles couldn’t breathe. Once when he was sixteen, he did a less-than-strictly-legal thing and… acquired… a police scanner for his Jeep. He was out driving one night headed to meet Scott somewhere and there was a broadcast that there’d been a police shooting. He’d almost driven off the road, ended up having a panic attack on the side of road that hadn’t really ended until he’d seen his dad.

He hadn’t been this scared since then.

He shoved through the crowd, incredibly grateful that his badge got him across the yellow tape, but he didn’t start breathing again until he saw Derek, sitting in the open doors of an ambulance.

Stiles skid to a stop in front of him, sucked in a hard breath and laid a hand against Derek’s neck. Then he breathed in again, slow and deep, and something in his chest unclenched. “Are you okay?”

Derek looked up at him, blinked, and then nodded. “Sorry.”

“Sir, you really need to let me take the baby,” a paramedic said.

And it was right, protocol and all, but Derek _snarled,_ “No.”

Stiles held out his arms. “Here, I’ll take him, okay? I’ll hold him while you get looked over.” When Derek nodded and transferred Ethan to his arms, Stiles glanced at the nearest cop. “What the hell happened?”

“I shot her,” Derek answered instead. “I think. It was – I–”

“Okay, slow down.” Stiles shifted Ethan to one arm and slid the other hand across the back of Derek’s neck. “Start at the beginning. And you’re okay, right?”

Derek leaned into the touch. “Yeah. I’m okay. I fell asleep. Ethan was fussy. I was just gonna sit for a minute and then I woke up two hours later. Went to check the locks and I turned around and she tazed me. Tazered? How do you verb that?”

“I don’t think it really matters,” Stiles said softly. “Did you pass out?”

“No. It just stunned me. She did it again when I started to get up.”

Stiles slid his hand up and carefully turned Derek’s head. There was an angry bruise blooming across most of his jaw, the skin split at the worst of it. He was pretty sure he knows what it was from and he almost didn’t want to know for sure, except he needed to ask. “What’s the bruise from?”

“The gun.” Derek pantomimed it half-heartedly, his hand faltering until it fell back onto his knee. “She asked me to apologize to her niece. Your friend, uh, Scott? With the baby, Sienna? You said her mother’s name was Allison? Is – was her last name–”

“Argent. Yeah. I know.” Stiles rubbed Derek’s shoulder as he glanced at the cop. “Okay. He needs to go the hospital.”

“I’m fine,” Derek interrupted.

Stiles rolled his eyes. “He needs to go to the hospital because he got tazed and he’s fucking stubborn. He’s probably not going to give you a better statement than that right now.”

“You can’t work this, Stilinski.”

“No shit. I’m not trying to. What I’m doing is taking care of the guy I’m dating, whose health and emotional well-being I happen to actually care about. Ride behind the ambulance if you want, but he needs to go. Now.”

It was one of his better speeches, but quite frankly, he was shocked when it worked and the cop nodded, closed his notebook, and walked away.

Derek leaned towards him. “I’m a suspect. It looks bad, doesn’t it?”

Letting out a sigh, Stiles stepped a little closer and pulled Derek in by the back of his neck until his forehead pressed against Stiles’ shoulder. “I’m not objective. But I believe you it was self-defence. And you need to get to the hospital.”

Derek sighed. “Can you take care of Ethan for a bit? I grabbed his diaper bag… they searched it already.”

“Yeah. I’ll call Laura, too, if you want.” Stiles pulled back and shifts Ethan around enough to unzip his hoodie and pull it off. It was too big for him, really, but it should fit Derek fine. “And I’ll try to bring you some clothes, okay?”

There was blood all over Derek’s pants and he wasn’t wearing a shirt, but he managed to still look surprised when Stiles handed over the sweatshirt.

“Right. Oh.” Derek dug a set of keys out of his pocket. “Take my car. Car seat.”

“Gotcha.” Stiles ducked down enough to kiss him, just once and softly, then straightened again. “I’ll meet you at the hospital.”

Watching the ambulance drive away really, really, really sucked. Wrestling a sleepy, clingy baby into a carseat – how fucking many buckles could those things _have?_ – was harder than he expected and he was actually sweating - and swearing - by the time he got the kid strapped in and secured. And then – and then he had to call Laura.

She answered with a half-asleep, “’Lo? What?”

“Hey. It’s Stiles.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked and instantly sounded more awake.

“Ethan and Derek are both fine. Ethan’s right here, he’s asleep. Derek – uh, Kate Argent broke into his apartment. He’s okay, but she’s dead. He’s on the way to the hospital to get looked over.”

Laura inhaled. “Is he – does he need a lawyer?”

Stiles pinched his nose. “Probably. It just… it’d be a good idea.”

“He’s okay, though, right? He’s not – is he hurt?”

“He’s got some bruises and he’s probably gonna be sore for a few days, but yeah, he’s okay. They’re just taking him to the hospital just to check him over, really." Stiles swallowed, scrubbing one hand over his hair. "I'm gonna meet him there. I'll - uh - I'll get him to call you, okay?"

"Yeah." Laura cleared her throat. "Take care of my boys for me. Or I'll break your knees."

 

 

Kate was supposed to be in Oregon. She’d gone to jail shortly after Derek’s twentieth birthday – she’d been twenty-six, but barely – and spent five years in there. She’d spent a year in California, living with her family, and then another two in Oregon, and that was where she was supposed to be. Derek and Laura had moved to New York while she was in jail and that was supposed to put enough distance between them that he wouldn’t have to worry about her anymore. He was _supposed_ to be told when she moved, especially if she moved to the same state as him… and yet somehow she’d been able to spend what the police thought was probably a month if not more sneaking into the empty apartment next to his, been able to get into his apartment through the crawl space over his bedroom closet that his fucking landlord should have repaired _years_ ago.

Derek wasn’t as angry as he should be – mostly he felt numb – but Stiles was angry enough for both of them, pacing back and forth next to the exam table Derek was sitting on.

“I’m going to yell at so many people,” Stiles muttered, adding a kind of dip to his steps. “I probably don’t have the power to get anybody fired, but I am going to annoy _so many people_ , I totally am, yeah,” he said, the last part directed at Ethan, who really, really should be sleeping right now. Laura was going to kill Derek when she got her sleep-deprived toddler back. “You wanna help? You got that whole high pitched screaming thing down, I’m sure that would be a joy to hear over the phone. You can totally get in on this, little dude.”

“Stiles,” Derek tried.

“No, nope, not happening, I’m angry and there were fuck-ups of massive proportions here.” Stiles winced and looked very seriously at Ethan. “If you decide to start talking, don’t repeat that word. And if you do, don’t tell your mom you heard it from me.”

“Stiles,” Derek said again, this time reaching out and hooking his fingers through on of Stiles’ belt loops to reel him in.

Stiles let himself be pulled in, still frowning. “What? You okay? Shit, you’re not having a heart attack or something, right? I can go get a–”

“Stop worrying,” Derek said and leaned his forehead against Stiles’ unoccupied shoulder.

Stiles exhaled, running his fingers carefully over Derek’s head. “Can't. I kind of care about you a little too much. Suck it up, buttercup.”

 

 

“You ready to get going?” Stiles set the carseat on the foot of Derek’s hospital bed because that thing was _heavy_. Baby that was totally out of it, check. Clean diaper – and that was an adventure, check. Carseat that he got out of the car without breaking, check. Boyfriend-type person with a clean bill of health, check. Boyfriend-type person who wasn’t going to be arrested, check.

Derek pulled on the T-shirt Stiles had brought him – clean clothes for said boyfriend-type person, check – followed immediately by Stiles’ hoodie, and nodded. “Yeah. God, what’s my apartment like?”

Stiles twitched his fingers on the carseat handle. “Okay, see. There’s a company you can hire to come in and clean everything up for you. And I thought maybe we could just… well, Laura’s not gonna be home for a bit, right? So you could bring Ethan’s fort thing–”

“Pack-and-play,” Derek said, smiling slightly.

“Right. Well, you could bring that downstairs and you guys could just stay with me for a while.”

Derek stood up and walked around the bed. He stopped in front of Stiles, leaned in and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the corner of Stiles’ jaw. “Thank you.”

Stiles kinda just patted at him, a little floored that he had had his mouth on Derek’s dick and came all over Derek’s abs and yet – and yet his face still heated up when Derek kissed his freaking cheek.

“Yup, okay.” Stiles kept patting him on the side for another minute, then figured screw it and grabbed himself a handful of ass. Derek _jumped_ , then gave a shaky half-laugh. “Okay. Let’s go home.”

Ethan woke up during the carseat battle and Stiles was beginning to see why parents hated these things. He was strapping the damn thing back into the base in the car. _There shouldn’t be this much crying_. He had never been so glad to see somebody fall asleep during a drive, seriously.

“What is it with the carseat?” Stiles stage-whispered.

Derek shrugged. “I have no frigging clue.”

“Yeah, no, I don’t get it. But I don’t think he’ll be able to appreciate my reasoning skills for a few years yet.”

Ethan didn’t wake up when Stiles slipped him from the carseat and hopefully this was the last time they had to move him for the night. Stiles so didn’t want there to be more crying. If there was more crying, he was pretty sure he’d be the one in tears. The pack-and-fort thing was in Stiles’ bedroom. It wasn’t like there was gonna be any fooling around and Derek was still reasonably paranoid and wanted him close. It wasn’t terribly different from his usual level of paranoia but Stiles thought considering the night’s events, it was probably something they could just leave be for a while.

Stiles checked the lock on the door and all the windows before searching out Derek again. He found him in the bathroom, hands splayed on either side of the sink. There was blood under his nails, stained dark against the skin there.

“Hey,” Stiles said, moving closer until he could fit his chest against Derek’s back. “Hey. So today sucked, huh?” He pressed a kiss against the base of Derek’s neck, then reached past him to open the medicine cabinet and dig around in the mess in there. “Here, I can – I’ve done this.”

He ran the water, made sure that it was warm enough to soothe, but not too hot. Soaped up Derek’s hands and then scrubbed them under the nails with a nail brush, because it sucked cleaning blood out from under your nails and Derek deserved someone to take care of him, at least for the night. It took a while for the water to run clear and Derek started shaking halfway through.

Stiles – Stiles probably wasn’t _good_ at taking care of people. He’d admit that. He used to try so hard to take care of his dad in high school because his dad, his dad and Scott were the only people he had for a long time. So he tried, because the idea of losing his dad _terrified_ him, but he wasn’t good at it. He used to bring dinner to his dad during night shifts, sit in the sheriff’s office of the police station back home in Beacon Hills and eat with him like the desk was their dining room table. Swapped out his dad’s fries for carrots and celery sticks, made him eat veggie burgers instead of cheeseburgers, nitpicked at him until the day his dad finally snapped and told him to cut it out only to end up holding Stiles through a panic attack. They’d ended up coming to an agreement that his dad would take better care of himself - because Stiles wasn’t any good at it.

He might not be good at taking care of people… but he was going to try with Derek, he thought as he stripped off Derek’s clothes and got him into one of Stiles’ way too big T-shirts to sleep in, then crawled into bed with him. Hell. Maybe he was growing.

 

 

Derek was holding Ethan when Laura barged into the apartment. He almost dropped the empty coffee mug he had in his hand when she grabbed them both, barely managing to put it down on the counter before she got to work crushing his ribs.

“Oh my God, you fucking bastard, don’t you ever scare me like that again.”

Derek patted gingerly at her back. “I’m so sorry. I thought I was imagining things – I mean, I was, but I wasn’t – I wouldn’t have put Ethan at risk like that, you know I wouldn’t–”

“I’m not _mad_ ,” Laura said, her voice cracking. She pulled back far enough to grab his chin, gingerly turning his face to the side. “Damn. Not gonna be able to ride on your looks for a while, huh? _You_ scared the crap out of me, Derek. I got a phone call from Stiles in the middle of the night and all I could think about was… I almost had a heart attack.” Laura exhaled loudly. “Okay, give me my baby and give me a real hug.”

Derek handed over Ethan, then pulled them both into an embrace. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

“Better be,” Laura said against his shoulder.

He nodded, kissed the top of her head, and hung on.

 

 

Derek could feel Stiles’ leg pressing against his. He was twitching, a little, because he was Stiles, after all, and if he was awake he had too much energy. Or caffeine. Or both.

“I still hate the fire escape,” Derek said.

Stiles squeezed his thigh, his hand down Derek’s pajama pants. Stiles himself was in a pair of plaid flannel pajama pants, two pairs of socks, one of Derek’s Henleys and his leather jacket. Derek had a pair of fuzzy pajama pants covered with little polar bears that Laura had bought him as a joke gift except they’d turned out to be stupid comfortable, one of the Henleys he used to sleep in and now Stiles usually stole and this giant God awful ugly sweater that Stiles found somewhere. It was one of the ugliest things in his closet and he didn’t know _where_ Stiles found it exactly, but it was warm and soft and nicer than you’d expect looking at it.

“I know,” Stiles replied, his feet dangling between the rails of the fire escape.

Derek had his feet tucked up under the blanket across their legs like a sensible person. It’s freezing, balls o’clock in the morning, and maybe he wasn’t as sensible as he claimed to be considering he was sitting on the fire escape with Stiles waiting for the sun to rise.

Stiles leaned over and stole a drink of Derek’s coffee, his hand covering Derek’s. “S’okay. Ugh, you put too much sugar in.”

“That’s how I like it,” Derek said mildly. “Seeing as it’s my coffee and not yours.”

Stiles grinned at him, completely shameless.

Derek took a drink of his coffee – which had just enough sugar, thank you very much – and pulled Stiles in a little tighter against his side as the sky began to lighten.

“You do realize that as soon as this is done, I’m going back to bed, right?”

Stiles shrugged. “Or we could fool around.”

Derek gave him a long look. “You’re the one all wound up, not me. I was asleep, remember? Because it’s five in the morning? I’ve been asleep for two hours, Stiles.”

Stiles leaned over, pressing a kiss against Derek’s jaw, and... well, maybe he could be convinced. “Watch the sunrise with me and I’ll rim you for as long as you can take.”

Derek shivered. “Yeah, okay.”

The view sucked. The apartment building wasn’t that that high, and their apartment was only on the fifth floor, so they were basically staring at the top of another building waiting for the sun to get enough to see.

Stiles hummed happily, absently rubbing Derek’s thigh.

The company wasn’t bad, though.

**Author's Note:**

> I googled this and spent a bunch of time reading about it so I'm gonna put this here because that was a lot of time spent for no reason, let's be real XD [This is Ethan's pack and play thing.](http://www.amazon.com/Graco-Pack-Travel-Playard-Green/dp/B005UV0UEA/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top) Pick whichever colour you like better. I'm not that picky.


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